


and gently whispered hope

by hardlygolden



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-24
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 00:51:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardlygolden/pseuds/hardlygolden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a voice in Damon's head that sounds suspiciously like Stefan, and it just won't shut up.</p><p>A coda of sorts to 2.11 - <i>By the Light of the Moon</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	and gently whispered hope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sophiaiswisdom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophiaiswisdom/gifts).



> Title from Foy Vance's _Gabriel and the Vagabond_
> 
> Written as a treat for Yuletide - hope you enjoy!

Damon doesn’t know why Rose’s death hits him as hard as it does.

 _Because it was your fault,_ explains the little voice in his head (which sounds suspiciously like Stefan). _She died because you antagonised that werewolf._

Damon hates that voice. His life? _So much_ easier before that voice made an appearance.

It doesn’t make sense that this voice has crept its way into his head, because Damon doesn’t _get_ guilty. He doesn't. It’s not like he’s a stranger to causing death. He stopped counting the number of people that died by his hand a long, long time ago – about the same time he stopped seeing himself as a person, truth be known.

He doesn’t know exactly when that changed, but it has, and he’s finding it difficult to adjust to this alteration in his perspectives.

He hasn’t been sleeping much, lately, and alcohol is doing nothing for him anymore. _Maybe you need to talk to someone,_ the voice says.

“Okay,” Damon says, feeling crazy. “Let’s talk.”

 _Not to yourself,_ it says, sounding amused. _Stefan._

The light is still on in Stefan’s room when Damon finally gives into the need for distraction. He’s not obeying the voice. He’s just – bored. That’s all.

He walks in without knocking, but he’s surprised to see Elena sitting up cross-legged in bed, reading.

He shouldn’t be surprised. She’s Stefan’s girlfriend, after all ( _that’s right: mine, as in, not yours,_ Stefan-in-his-head says, sounding insufferably smug about that fact).

“Shh,” she says, nodding her head towards Stefan. Stefan – who’s sleeping peacefully beside her. There goes Damon’s distant hope that Stefan was somehow using previously unrevealed vampiric-strength to mess with his thoughts. “He’s had a really long day.”

“Well, in that case, I wouldn’t dream of intruding on his beauty sleep,” Damon assures her, and only someone who knew him very well would realise the mocking lilt in his voice is forced.

“Wait. What’s wrong?” she asks, sounding more serious. He notices she’s in the same pyjama twin-set he commented on last time. The night he told his brother’s girlfriend how he felt about her ( _and then compelled her to forget the entire conversation,_ the voice reminds him. _Because you knew what she’d say and you were tired of hearing it)_.

He feels pathetic, all of a sudden, standing in his brother’s doorway in the middle of the night.

What was he expecting, Stefan to welcome him with open arms, and forgive what amounts to almost a century and a half of bad blood between them? Just because they are on speaking terms these days doesn’t mean they are still the brothers they were.

“It’s nothing, Elena,” he says. “Go back to sleep.”

Elena is rubbing at her eyes, a childish gesture that he shouldn’t find at all endearing.

“It’s not nothing, obviously,” she says. “Why are you here, Damon?”

But he’s already walking away.

 _Yes, Damon. Why were you there?_ asks the Stefan-in-his-head.  For once, the voice sounds more curious than smug.

Damon fiercely ignores it. Avoidance is always easier than the alternative.

 _You’ve tried running away, Damon,_ the voice reminds him. _You can’t keep running forever._

Watch me, he thinks. Leave me alone. Please.

 _Like you leave me alone?_ the voice asks, but the pity beneath the sarcasm bleeds through and mercifully, the voice retreats.

*

He wakes up the next day, and he still feels this weird disconnection, restless a way that is different to usual.

That afternoon, he takes a walk to clear his mind, pacing in futile circles and finally coming to a halt at the edge of the boarding house, near where the woods start. There’s a bench, there, and he sinks down onto it. He shuts his eyes. He wants to think about nothing – blissful oblivion.

 _Why do you keep doing this to yourself, Damon?_

“Shut _up_ , Stefan,” he grits out, without opening his eyes.

“I didn’t say anything,” says Stefan, and Damon turns to see the real Stefan standing there, looking puzzled (so: just another day at the office for Stefan’s face, then). “Usually you at least wait until I start talking before you tell me to shut up.”

“You were thinking too loudly,” Damon returns lightly.

Stefan is still looking at him, and Damon squirms uncomfortably, wondering what, exactly, he’s seeing. “No,” says Stefan. “I don’t think that’s it.”

 _Tell him._

“Lately I keep hearing your voice,” Damon says, speaking quickly before he loses his nerve. “In my head.”

Admitting it out loud isn’t as bad as he feared.  
It’s worse.

Damon risks a quick glance at Stefan’s expression. He looks as if he has just been handed a puppy with two heads, and doesn’t quite know what to do with it.

“That’s - not exactly normal,” Stefan says, obviously weighing every word carefully.

Damon stretches his arms out in front of him, and studiously avoids eye contact with Stefan.

“Elena said you came by looking for me last night,” Stefan says, after a few moments of silence have passed.

“Elena has a big mouth,” Damon shoots back.

“We’re not talking about Elena at the moment,” Stefan says.

“I am,” Damon says, plastering on a grin as he sprawls back in his seat, feigning an ease he doesn’t feel. “I could talk about Elena all day. I’ll start with those legs, because, well, have you _seen_ the legs on that girl?”

“Damon.”

“Now, now. You know I’m right. And that cute little nose. There’s something about it, isn’t there –“

“ _Damon._ ”

“Look,” Damon bites out. “Let’s skip the whole you-can-talk-to-me crap. I know I can, you know I won’t, rinse and repeat.”

“Actually,” Stefan says, “I wasn’t going to say that at all.”

“Sure you weren’t.”

“I wasn’t,” Stefan insists. “I was going to talk about something else.”

“Elena, then.”

“Not everything’s about Elena,” says Stefan. “And before you say it, no, not Katherine either.”

“What else is there for us to talk about?”

When he speaks, Stefan sounds amazed and a little sad. “ _Us,_ Damon. You and me.”

“Oh,” Damon says, listless. “That.”

“Yeah,” Stefan says. “That. We’re still brothers, you know.” His voice is tinged with an unexpected warmth, which causes Damon to feel a phantom pain where his heart used to be. “Do you remember when you came home from the war, that summer?”

“No,” Damon lies.

Stefan peers at him. “Really?”

“Really.” Damon says firmly.

Stefan shakes his head and stands up, and Damon tells himself he’s not sorry.

Stefan takes a few steps forward and then leans over and picks something up, and the next thing Damon knows there’s a football hurtling towards his chest.

He catches it, and looks across at Stefan. Stefan’s grinning at him.

“Do you remember anything _now_?”

“No,” Damon says, and allows himself a brief moment to treasure the disappointed look on Stefan’s face before he speaks again. “Oh, wait. I remember kicking your ass at football.”

“You think you’ve still got what it takes?” Stefan taunts, but there’s no malice there, and Damon wonders if there ever was, or whether he’s been attributing motives to Stefan for a long time now that may not actually belong to him at all.

“Only one way to find out,” Damon says, as the ball arcs through blue sky and into Stefan’s outstretched arms.

*

They’re still playing football an hour later, when Elena finds them.

She catches the ball on reflex when Stefan throws it at her, and then looks at them both with wide eyes, before fixing her gaze on Damon. “Are you...”

“Playing football?” interjects Stefan. “Yes, he is.”

“ _We_ are,” Damon corrects.

A mischievous glint enters Stefan’s eyes. “And now,” he says, pausing to shoot a quick look at Damon before returning his attention to Elena, “ _you_ are.”

They tackle Elena in unison, and she shrieks but she’s laughing even as she bats them away. They collapse to the ground in a tangle of arms and legs, and it takes Damon a moment to identify why this feels so strange. This doesn’t make sense, because they don’t do this, the three of them.

They don’t even like me, he thinks, clinging to that one certainty.

 _Are you so sure of that?_

Yes, he thinks: because this, he knows. I killed Stefan’s best friend. I snapped Elena’s brother’s neck in front of her, remember?

 _Not the sort of thing you forget,_ the voice says dryly.

Exactly, Damon says. I’m not – I’m not good.

 _They know that._

They’re still here, though.

 _Yes. They are._

There is a warmth in his chest that has nothing to do with the sun and everything to do with the two people next to him.

 _When you turn off the switch, it’s not just the bad feelings that come back,_ Stefan says, and Damon has his eyes closed so he doesn’t know whether it’s the Stefan-in-his-head speaking or Stefan himself. It doesn’t really matter. They’re both right, they always are.

It’s why they’re so annoying.

It’s why he needs Stefan around.

When he opens his eyes, Stefan and Elena are still there, and for the first time he lets himself wonder what it would be like, if he could have this.

It’s a stupid thought, of course – he can’t.

“We should probably go back,” Elena says, sitting up. “It’s getting dark.”

Damon grasps a hold of Stefan with one hand and her with the other, pulling them back down. “There’s no rush. I promise all our problems will still be there.”

Because going back means going back to Katherine and Klaus, witches and werewolves. Back to his old ways, because all those years and who he’s become can’t be wiped away by just one idyllic afternoon, and he knows himself well enough to know that.

 _Still. It’s a start,_ says the voice - and for the first time, it sounds hopeful _._

 


End file.
